The Record of My Heart (Words #3.5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

weeks until semester’s end. Nine weeks in which we’ll have to keep a low profile and bide our time. I have no doubt this will be the longest nine weeks of my life.
    I left her there, in the lobby of Jackman Hall, ostensibly to pick up my car and carry on with my day, all the while thinking, CAR? DAY? WHO THE FUCK CARES? But then as I was walking away, I found a glove on the sidewalk—might it have been hers?—a perfect excuse to double back. I did just that and found her curled up on the floor crying. God help me, my Aubrey was crying, and I was supposed to leave? She claimed to be overwhelmed by the events of the preceding hour.
    (I could have told her that made two of us.)
    I comforted her as best I could without compromising myself—as always, imagining cameras tracking my every move. This is what Nicola’s false accusation and my paranoia have done to me. I suppose I fancy myself the star of a never-ending episode of Candid Camera, self-conscious in the extreme, aware of every public movement.
    So yes, I walked away. I had to. It was the only way to save myself. If I’d stayed longer, I’m sure I would have pulled her into my arms and kissed her tears away. Then her tears would have stopped, and I would have kept kissing her because…because once I kiss her, I know that will become my sole purpose in life.
    To kiss her as much and as often as possible.
    Moments after leaving her in that vestibule, the predictable questions began to bubble in my brain. What had I done? What was I going to do now? The answer presented itself immediately. Have an anxiety attack, of course—not a full-blown attack, merely the early stages of one. This isn’t surprising. I was probably in shock, completely taken aback by what I’d just done, throwing myself into the line of fire like that, giving Aubrey plenty of rope to hang me with, if she chose to use it. Could I be more self-destructive? The more I thought, the more confused I felt. Chatting with Penny and Jeremy over coffee afterward, attempting to justify my foolhardy actions to them, merely heightened my distress.
    Oddly enough, a phone message from Martin upon my return to the condo late this afternoon reminded me that my frustration over not being able to pursue Aubrey freely and with unrestrained passion is actually not the most earth-shattering crisis imaginable. The death of a student has put my ridiculous “problem” into perspective. Having no luck reaching Martin to clarify the nature of the fatal incident he’d briefly alluded to in his message, and not even clear about the identity of the victim, I foolishly rushed back to Jackman, without an ounce of forethought, to make sure Aubrey was okay. Not knowing her apartment code, I had no way of gaining entry to the building, but I managed to sweet talk my way in with a couple of residents. After walking aimlessly up and down the second floor of Jackman, not entirely sure which apartment was Aubrey’s, I finally heard her voice through one of the doors. Thankful that she was okay, although mildly disgruntled to hear her laughing and having a grand old time with Matt (“sweet cheeks,” she calls him—I could cheerfully throttle him), I escaped from Jackman unseen and made my way home.
    I eventually heard back from Martin, and sadly, Mary Langford is the student who died. She perished in a car accident last Wednesday.
    It’s times like this that I struggle against cynicism. Life is so frigging fragile. And it’s in light of this complication that I wonder if maybe my grandfather would be easy on me—tell me to “live a little.” I’d express my desire to do just that, but also share my frustration at not knowing what lies ahead, telling him how much easier things would be if we could know the future implications of our actions in the here and now. Gramps would quote Churchill and warn me to be ruled not just by my heart, but by my head.
    Good old Churchill. Why couldn’t he have been a flakey old romantic?